Between two places

Prague is cold and grey and hard and beautiful. Peru was warm and happy and noisy and dusty. Prague has a tint of communism, of a recent war, of a hard life. Peru had overtones of colonialism, of a people struggling to live past the past. I am between these two places. These two international homes. I am torn by them both. I see their pains, I see their truths, and I see reason to love them both. I am lost in these two places. I melt into them and don’t emerge, I let myself sink and feel and become. I miss my lovely and exciting and challenging Peru, I wander my new home in Prague and cannot find a trace of Peru. I come from neither and yet they both affect me so strongly. I want to cry from passion, from confusion, from loneliness. This life is lonely. This life is stimulating. This life is expanding. The expanse hurts. Why do I lose myself whenever I am new again? Why do I forget myself? Where did I go? Was I left behind in these moves? Must I empty myself in each new place, waiting to be filled like a bucket in the sand. I don’t want to float here. I want, I don’t know what I want anymore. I want me. But where am I me?

Thoughts

The fact that mainstream media has categorically ignored rape allegations against Donald Trump says something about the value and weight we give to women in this country. We accuse him of supporting sexual assault when we hear him speaking about his own acts, but when women come forward about their experience of rape and sexual assault we say they are unreliable. Both are speaking about there experiences but only one is believed to be “trustworthy” enough to question and focus on. When I first read the news I expected it to blow up all over the media. Instead I have had to search it out through alternative media sources. Women’s voices need to be trusted. Women’s voices should not be ignored. Women’s voices should be heard and valued.

PMDD

Can I just pretend I don’t exist? I think

As I sit under my blanket, hiding from no one

A few hours later than an appropriate bedtime.

Once a month

Like clockwork

I feel this way, or I should say I don’t.

I go numb.

My body, my mind.

I hate myself for everything I do.

Lose all faith in my speech.

In my thoughts.

I do all the things I’m not supposed to.

Moving like a ghost of a person.

The depression like a physical memory.

Taking over like it never left.

Its milder now, but I still feel it

For those six days

The hell before the bloodshed.

Once a month I become someone else.

A mouse,

Shy and skittish

Loud noises overwhelm and anger me.

Once a month the slight problems become gaping.

And all I can think is:

I hate myself. I hate myself. I hate myself.

Can I just pretend I don’t exist?

Midnight Thoughts

Midnight thoughts:

 

“No one will ever love me,

I will be alone forever”

 

Oh but I can’t think this way

I can’t fall down the rabbit hole

 

But the rabbit hole pulls

It looks so easy just to fall, no fight

 

The battle between the wolves

Wages in my throat

 

My heart beats faster and faster

From the exertion of balancing on the edge

 

Rabbit hole or not?

Good wolf or bad wolf?

 

I want to fight, I do

But these thoughts feel so real

 

They are backed by evidence

Concrete proof of my pitiful existence

 

I struggle to remind myself

That evidence can be used in any argument

 

It can be twisted to support the opposite cause

I must force myself to believe this is the case here

 

My mind has twisted the evidence

My pitiful existence is anything but that.

absent romance

Who am I?
Am I even someone if I’ve never had the chance to be in love
To kiss passionately
To feel body against body.

Will I ever feel that way.
Because lately it seems like its not an option for me
Every person has their pair
Except me.

I am doomed to sit on the sideline
Lusting after so many
While they find their own love.
I am always going to be alone.

And thus I can never fully be human
In this world that expects sex and romance
The question of my own love life
Will forever be a knife twisting in my chest.

I liked him you see
And I thought I had a chance
Until I saw him with the girl at the dance
And his arm around her waist

I held out hope
But I knew I'd lost it
I mourned his possibilities
As I saw him carefully kiss her cheek.

I think these thoughts and feel this emptiness
And I am alone because they are incomprehensible
To the outsider.
They are only mine to bear.

Because no one has this shit luck I have.
No one has this forced naivety,
This virginity that feels like a weight keeping me caged,
No one knows how desperately in love I am with love.

Reflection on a Lost Friend

My thoughts of her are anger, rage, contempt. But then some days they aren’t. Some days it is an ache and a clot in my throat as others discuss their “best friend”. I open a quiz about a best friend to remember we are on hiatus, a break, that could prove permanent. I don’t want it to be permanent. But I also know that if I were to be her best friend at the moment it wouldn’t be the truth. She has growing to do, and I have healing to accomplish. My wounds are still very much there from the last two years of a fake friendship.

I stalk her Instagram. I don’t know why exactly. It is a partial way to fuel my anger because if I am angry than at least I am not sad. I am afraid to be sad about her again. The last time I was, I barely escaped. I was in fact pulled out by the promise of a life far from home and the return of her. And the return of the safety blanket of a best friend.

I am someone who does not believe in marriage. I have said this since I was a child, hearing my parents yell in the room next door. It comes from a deeply held belief that I don’t want someone to feel contractually obligated to love me and come home to me every night. I feel the same about our friendship. As though the label of “best friend” has become so sacred we didn’t dare to admit when it was the only thing tying us to each other. If anything she has proven my point.

I miss her but I am angry. I feel a heartbreak like never before. And I know that though I may never have been in a romantic relationship, this two year breakdown of a nine year platonic relationship is more experience than 10 minor boyfriends and break ups. Life is hard without her, and I struggle to get by without the knowledge of my pillar standing me up. But I needed her and my pillar fell silently. So I have found that I will always struggle with or without her, until she has remembered how to be my pillar once again.

My disillusionment with the institution of marriage

Here is another blog I found recently that I meant to post about four months ago:

I recently learned that a couple that I watch on YouTube through vlogs and videos are now separated. I don’t know why but this hit me like an avalanche. It made me sad—I wanted to cry for these two people I didn’t know who were simply reinforcing my idea of marriage that I have had for a long time.

 

You see, I don’t want to get married. And yes, my parents are still together. I don’t want to get married because I want to be free to live my life as selfishly as I please. I only have one time to live and I’ve never felt the urge to compromise with anyone else. This doesn’t mean I am against all marriages, I just don’t think its right for me. On a more basic level I think that marriage is getting harder and harder with all the pressures of child rearing and money and home making. All these pressures make it harder to remain the same person you were when you met your spouse. It makes it harder to remember that your entire life is not bills and carpools and working to provide for the family. This, and the pressure of signing a contract that half of all people don’t complete makes marriage a nearly impossible venture.

 

At least it seems this way to me. You see, my parents didn’t try to hide things from me as a kid. I slept near their room for a while so at nights I could hear them arguing about money. Sometimes it was so loud I felt like they were yelling in my ear. I have been able to forget about it lately as this tumultuous time in their relationship has passed for the most part. However, I have never been able to look at them the same. I have never seen my parents in the way others do. As the perfect, sweet couple, whose story and love is everlasting and meant to be. I have always been realistic in seeing how their relationship is and how it works. I have heard their arguments clearly, to the point where I thought my bed would rock from the sound. My mother has complained to me about my father endlessly without fear of changing my view. Even as I’ve moved to a different room I still know how often they fight because my dog comes looking for me with a terror and sadness. I recognize this look from my younger years, this look of confusion and fear about why this fighting and noise is happening. I never had a person to go looking for when I was sad. My sister moved her room far before the fighting got bad. She still believes in a love between my parents. I see the truth of their relationship—that they aren’t that bad anymore, that they have gotten over the money problems of the past and the issues of raising to dependent children. Their children have moved away so the stress has lifted and they are able to relax. But I haven’t seen a romantic love between them for many years. They are now old friends. They are now only together for my sister and i. They would most likely be happy in new relationships but aren’t quite unhappy enough in this relationship to disrupt their way of living for the past 25 years.

 

Divorce has been a part of my life, a possibility lurking in the shadows, since I was in elementary school. I have never been fooled about the realities of marriage. I have never been fooled about the realities of a relationship. I never got the chance. So when I began watching this little family who looked so happy and content, with all the late night fights and tense car rides cut out in the editing process, I began to pin my hopes to them. I began to think that yes maybe families and relationships can work out. That elementary schooler’s dreams, which I thought had died long ago, were reawakened. She so badly wanted this to be true. She so badly wanted to be proved wrong. To be shown that not everything is the same as her own family. She so badly wanted to believe in a lasting, perfect and true love.

 

It didn’t work out that way though, and that hit me hard in the core. My ideals of marriage had never had a chance to form because I had seen the realities before they would have. So when the ideals did form only to be cut down, my realistic beliefs were made real again to me. I was again proven right. My hopes were dashed and I became the cynical teenager again. Let me be clear, during this time my own preferences on marriage never wavered. I have never wanted to be married, the word has always felt strange and foreign and impossible to me. Only my reasons, only my beliefs about the reality of marriage were softened and there was a small hope in the pit of my stomach that relationships do not always have to be the same. Do not always have to end in fighting and pain. The snap back to reality was painful and I still don’t know if I like being back in reality. I still don’t know if being a realist or a dreamer is the better way to live my life.

A Couple Announcements!!!

Hello All!

I know it has been a long times since I last wrote. That would be due to the busy life I’ve had for the last couple of months. I have wanted to write but haven’t had the time or energy to put down thoughts. Today though I am here to tell you why I have been so busy.

First, I now have a new blog. A couple months back I wrote a post about why I am a feminist. After discussing with another blogger in the comments we were inspired to create a blog specifically surrounding this kind of post. This blog is now up over at tumblr! Read more about it here!

If you are interested in helping me start this blog and this conversation please submit your reasons to this blog and contribute to the mission of this blog. Click here to submit.

Second, I have decided to make the next month a poetry month on this blog! I have a lot of poetry backed up that I haven’t posted and so I will be posting a poem a day on this blog. These poems are close to my heart and I really hope you all will enjoy them. These July Poems start this Wednesday so keep an eye out!

Pensive Post

I haven’t sat down and written in a while. I mean, I have, but not something coming purely from me. I’ve written essays, I’ve written opinion pieces, I’ve written applications. I haven’t written just to sit down and feel that strength and power that comes from writing. I’ve missed the ticks of the keyboards as a make a mark that comes from me alone. I have felt a consistent overwhelmed, anxious feeling this week. I have midterms coming up and I have a lot of work but that shouldn’t cause my heart to beat as though I am facing a lion in the wild.

As I write this I am listening to a musician named Tom Rosenthal and his song It’s OK has made me feel pensive in a very good way. A pensive that makes me feel at peace with myself in a way I haven’t felt in far too long a time.

 

 

I saw a counselor this week for the first time since I realized that the therapist I had been seeing my whole life had been doing all the wrong things for me. That she contributed to my fear and anxiety surrounding accepting my Depression. Which I have now. I have Depression. No matter what others say, I will continue repeating this to myself in order to validate my feelings. I may be an imposter in other’s eyes but if I continue denying myself this it will get worse. I have had two major breakdowns in the last six weeks. I have isolated myself from my friends. I have isolated myself from myself. It is the only way I know to hold myself together until the pressure ends. But it won’t ever end and I need to understand this because otherwise I will keep holding it together until it becomes physically impossible.

Asking for help is the thing I am worst at. It is also the thing I most want to do most days. To tell someone how I am feeling and have them look on with sympathy. I have discovered that I want people to understand my predicament and feel sympathetic and try to help but there is a difference between that and pity. The line between sympathy and pity is a thin one but very distinct. Pity is looking at me like a helpless human who cannot do anything or decide anything for herself. Sympathy is looking at me like a human who is in pain and simply needs someone to listen. Pity is looking at me like I am weak, sympathy is knowing how I feel but believing I am strong.

All in all I do not know what is going on with me. Maybe it is Depression, maybe it is Anxiety, maybe it is PMDD. Whatever the fuck it is, I need to deal with it but writing that in a blog and actually doing that are different. I cannot reach out. Whatever is in my mind makes me feel disconnected and unwanted to a point that it is almost impossible to see others as a network. Rather I see myself in a bubble surrounded by a network of connections and people I just can’t reach.

“I’m a hold my cards close
I’m a wreck what I love most
I’m a first class let down
I’m a shut up sit down”

This lyric from Imagine Dragons’ song Polaroid off their new album has been going through my mind. It and the entire album have spoken truths to me. The album itself has such an upbeat vibe, but if you look close it struggles with issues that aren’t too extreme but eventually and gradually pull you down.

I know this was a rambling blog, which I don’t usually (or ever) do. I like to keep up with intellectual opinions and productive thoughts but today I felt like sitting down to write a pensive piece. This is a combination of thoughts and feelings of the last couple of weeks. A YouTube video done by Jack Howard, which was a combination of clips from his month ending with a reflection, inspired me to do the same.

I hope you all have had a good month and get the chance to reflect as well. If you are a new visitor just know that this is not my usual blog type. If you are a regular (if there are any of you) let me know what you think of this break from tradition. I hope to be back on schedule next week when the melancholy subsides.

Scars

My oldest scar is an oval white puff on my right arm.

It appeared when I was two and trying to serve coffee to my parents.

I lifted the mug at a right angle, and out splashed the burn.

It was a third degree burn.

It was the only time I’ve been in an ambulance.

My mother had to take me to a burn clinic.

This scar has been on my arm since I can remember.

Never have I looked down and seen an arm free of it.

Never have I found it strange or out of place.

It is a part of me as much as my vegetarianism, my left-handedness, my blonde-hair.

I would feel wrong, unnatural without it.

But over the years it has started to fade away.

It is not as puffy, not as white.

It does not stand out against the skin as much.

You can no longer see the splash marks unless you know where to look.

As I grow, it shrinks.

My biggest fear is an eventual nonexistence.

It catches my breath to think of a time when I do not have this mark on my arm.

This may seem counterintuitive to those who see their scars as ugly.

But my scar has always been a part of my skin.

A source of comfort.

A place to rub and remind me of who I am.

I distinctly remember when I was a kid I would see commercials for products that remove scars.

I was always so confused.

Why would anyone want to rid themselves of a part of their being? I would ask.

My scar was a thing of beauty in my eyes.

A point of uniqueness.

A sign of a life lived.

But as I grow, it disappears.

And with it, a part of me, a part of my skin, my soul, disappears.

Now there are new scars on my right arm.

Scars which have appeared as punishment for forgetting the first.

I have replaced the old if for no other reason but to prove that I have lived.

To stake my claim on my body.

To prove I was here and if I cannot make a mark on the world,

I will make a mark on my body.